Arizona weekly citizen., 1887-05-21
BOGUS LITERARY FLUCTUATIONS.
Fashionable Folks Who Masquerads iu Other People.. Taient-A Curiou. Cr.xa

Fashionable Folks Who Masquerad. in
 Other Peoples Talent-A Curious Craze. l have young friend, a really talented fellow, who if he had been east upon the town would have made place for him self in literature. He happens tO enjoy q competency, however, and takes life far too easily to disturb himself with more serious employment than the killing of time. He is fond of making literary ex- perimcnts in his more industrious mo- ments. and has quite a collection of man Uscr.pt slowed away in his desk. which he is continually promising himself tO revise and polish up for publication. some of these affairs, stories, skesihes, little farces, fragments Of verse, he has read to me, and they have invariably been sufficiently ingenious in construction and good in quality to impress themselves upon my memory.
 Judge my amazemeut, therefore, when l found one of the stories ] had listened to over The cigars and Crog iu h.s apartments printed iu e prominent m.-aziue a week or SD C -J. Judge of my further astOnish- ment when 1 noted that it l,.ts credited not O the real author but Co a certain wOu.1l who enjoys quite literary repu- tatiou in society. one of the swell amateurs who have made writing for the press 6 fashion. There had been a sort Of senti- mental weakuess on my friends part for this person l knew. It was evident now that it had gone the length of his lending her his talent Co masquerade il.
 I got quite A collection of her other sto- ries together, or rather of those she has been credited with writing. and read them atteu,ively. There was no mistaking their authorship. Every one bore tie earmarks rl my idle amateur. who would not take The trouble to seek an outlet for his talent, but WAS ready to bestOw it on a woman who had caught his platonic fancy. When EeNt met him l taxed him with this in justice to himself, but he laughed the re- proof lightly off.
 Bless your innocent sOulr' he said
 They all do it. Do you suppose the stories Miss x. and Mrs Y. sign are any more original with them than Mrs. Z's are with herr The only difference iS that they buy theirs from some professional scTibhler. Mrs z. happens tO get hers for a less substantial price 2"
 Curlously enough, only a couple of night, later. ! encountered at the theatre an able literary hack whom have known for many years. He looked unusually prosperous, considering his old estate He was, he said, eerning 6 good salary as sub-edieor on morning paper, and put ting in his odd time writing stories and poetry. As had never seen any of these in print l remarked upon it. He An- swered, little embarrassed:
 Well, you see l don't print them over my own name"
 l supposed he meant that he used . nom de plume, and as he exhibited no de- sire to be confidential l pressed my in- quiries no further. I have since learned that he has for months been supplying one of our society geniuses with manuscript which that person adopts as her own She pays him handsomely for the work, and probably gives the manuscript away for the sake Of getting it into type
 There must be plenty of kindred cases to these, for the literary craze is fairly rampant in society, and where two ex- amples of this form of fraud are to be found you may be bound that others exist However, it is SO rarely that literature gets the benefit of fashionable fad that We can Condone an evil that has certain alloy Of good. In the excesses to which vanity will run, this is perhaps the most curious.-Alfred Tumble in The Jour nalst